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Lon Michels Book Cover Illustrations

Excerpt, page 265

…Lon has also taken shamanic workshops and worked with a teacher for some time in Florida. For him, shamanism is a means of accessing a level of cognition or creativity that is at the heart of his work as an artist. Creating canvases full of mantra-like repeated patterns and images of cryptic inserted spirit helpers and symbols, Lon seeks to present visually and artistically the worldview of shaman within the Western idiom of canvas painting and mural. All of these individuals show a deep interest in shamanism as a religious tradition or psychic technique, as well as a desire to incorporate it into their personal spirituality in various ways. They are participants in a lively and growing phenomenon termed by scholars of religion and anthropology “contemporary shamanism” or “neoshamanism.” Since the former term implies that extant traditional shamanisms like Thai’s ae somehow not “contemporary,” we shall use the term neoshamanism here. Extremely variable…